Attached are the info on the latest development on rice husk gas stove in India. Just to update you that rice husk gas stove is now being commercialized by Navdurga Metal Industries of India.

From the India Economic Times:

The three-year-old startup based at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh has created rice husk-powered, smokeless biomass cooking stoves that significantly reduce the cost of household spending on conventional fuel sources such as LPG, electricity, kerosene, wood and wood charcoal. "Rice husks can give about 3,000 kilo calorie of energy, compared with wood that gives between 3,800 and 4,000. These stoves reduce carbon emissions, and cooking costs significantly," said Jaiswal, 31. Nav Durga's first product, aptly named Janta Chulha Smokeless Stove, was launched in 2009 and priced at Rs 500. It has now launched a range under the brand name, Agni, which caters to both domestic and industrial customers. "We currently manufacture up to domestic 10,000 cook stoves and about 50 commercial stoves a month. We want to ramp that up to 20,000 domestic and up to 1,000 commercial stoves soon," Jaiswal said.

According to recent industry data, about 67% of Indian households, adding up to about 166 million households, continue to use solid fuels as their primary source of cooking fuel. While conversion to modern fuels has accelerated in urban areas, rural areas have been slow. Saurabh and the firm's co-founder Arvind Jaiswal, 56, have set up their own distribution and supply chain system. The startup currently has about 50 distributors spread across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Punjab. The company employs about 50, spread across two facilities in Faizabad and Faridabad, in Haryana. "The manufacturing is done by local talent alone," Jaiswal said.

The original news article, and instructions sheets for the stoves are attached as pdf files.

Open Space is a concept to give freedom to the people. Within minimum given place, people would have access to Fire to cook (good stove), have access to food, water for drinking, source for light (apart from stove, some light from solar powered lamps), place for communication and networking with others and a place for reading books, news papers, etc. These type of "Open Spaces" would be kept in public places, especially for the poor people to access all the above facilities..

Open Space was designed by Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy..being facilitated under the theme "Be-Cause".. for the urban poor people...http://e-openspace.blogspot.in/

In the study location, the researchers extensively interviewed householders about their stove building and cooking habits. In this area, Mothers and daughters often build portable or fixed place Chulha stoves that they use to burn dung, wood and straw. The authors did a great job of interviewing stove users and attempting to understand from the users point of view, why these unimproved mud stoves were used more often than the improved stoves that they had available.

Burning dung, is a vital part of the local economy and culture of this place, and the women cooking, use the dung for low simmering, in a purpose-built mud stove. It doesn't look like that stove usage was effectively replaced by the improved stoves that have been introduced in this area. The local cooks also pan fry and then bake roti, which they bake pretty easily in the local chulah stove, and the Philips and Oorja stoves don't have a place to do this baking.

It seems like cooks in this area don't mind having multiple stoves for different purposes, and this type of study is essential to understanding what the cooks needs are before we try to address those with improved stoves.

MIT has recently published the paper "Up in Smoke" by Rema Hanna, Ester Duflo and Michael Greenston which studies the a randomized installation of the Chullah in India. The study participants received skilled help in installing the Chullah stove and minimal help in maintaining them.

See the attached pdf (about 150kb): Understanding Stoves
it is an excellent brief summary that highlights the important aspects of stoves design and testing. e.g. fuels, fuel preparation, stove design, materials, use and testing.

* About 30% biochar production
* 3 to 4 days for a batch of charcoal production
* Continuous hot water access (pot 1)
* Highly suitable for institutional cooking and as well making biochar
* Additional heat generated by flaring the pyrolysis gases, used for cooking
* Mitigation of the emissions during the pyrolysis by flaring
* Costs about Rs. 3000 for a 2’ width x 5’ depth x 6’ hight (in feet) “GEO Biochar pit stove”. (cost including, tin sheet for cover, digging the pit, three pot stove and chimney.)

*_"GEO BIOCHAR STOVE" is designed by Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, CEO, GEO. Demonstrated to farmers under the project Good Stoves and Biochar Communities Project, being supported by GoodPlanet.org, France